Merry Catmas!

My sister says this picture reminds her of some kind of European rock album cover.

Cat Typing vs WordPress Publishing

I finally figured out the problem that several kind people had reported over the weekend about No Posts Found on The Printable CEO™ Series Page. I wasn't able to reproduce it here at all...usually "empty pages" are the fault of (I think) WP-Cache getting a PHP timeout on my overburdened shared server, and a cache flush will usually clear that up. This seemed to work, but then I got another two reports, and I started getting suspicious.

This morning it occured to me that it might have been my recent update of Bad Behavior, or possibly there was some cookie-related issue with WP Cache (it uses the wordpress cookies as part of its page hash key). I nuked all the wordpress-related cookies and lo...No Posts Found! Crap! I tested this on my Mac also, logging out, and saw that YES INDEED, NO POSTS FOUND. So apparently I was able to reproduce it as a non-logged in user. Hmm.

I remembered a few nights ago that there was a MASSIVE flurry of activity by a very hungry cat (named Kat), as I was trying to get updates made to the website. Kat had jumped up on the desk and rammed his moist nose into my face, purring loudly and tapdancing on the keyboard. I might have made a wild click or two as I was spitting out hair and cat boogers, because the private flag had been set on that post. I just republished the article, and now it should be again visible to people.

Thanks everyone for the headsup! You guys rock :-)

Cat Dentistry

I just dropped Kat off at the Animal Hospital for what I thought was just a dental cleaning, but apparently he has very bad gingivitis and needs to have 4 teeth extracted. FOUR TEETH! I feel awful. Then I'll have to give him anti-bacterial pills afterwards, which neither of us are looking forward to. The doctor's assistant just called and said that they want to run a test for feline leukemia to see if his immune system has been compromised, as he's a young cat and shouldn't have such bad teeth at his age. And that's all I know. It is going to be a long day. Kate, on the other hand, is just fine.

On a side note, this is the first time that someone directly under my care is underdoing a serious diagnostic and surgical procedure, and I can't help but notice that the feeling is a little different than when it's for someone else who can take care of themselves. So this is quite probably one of those empathy-building moments that marks the continued transition from happy-go-lucky kid to responsible adult. In these cases, there really isn't any question about what to do when it comes to the well-being of the people and pets that are close to you. Up to now, I'd had the implicit assumption that everyone was pretty much taking care of themselves, cats included. That really isn't necessarily the case, I'm now realizing...a very strange sensation, and new. It is also somehow very clarifying.

Random Cat Picture

Kate Looks Bored. That is All.

Productivity, Thy Foe is Cat

I was just settling down to do some pre-work planning, but apparently this was not meant to be:

He laid down right on top of everything I was working on. Yeah, my office is a mess right now. Still need to mount the check rail over my monitor! In the meantime I'm using some extra-sticky Post-It pads on a portable whiteboard...that's a useful trick to write about, now that I think about it.

(Aside: Thine? Thy? Which one is it?) UPDATE: Fixed the title :-) I was confused whether Productivity was plural or not...thanks, commenters!